


How Far Down the Road Can You See?

by APgeeksout



Category: All Elite Wrestling, Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Affection, Episode Tag, Established Relationship, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 12:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19906048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: Jon and Renee and Roman steal some time together backstage at Fyter Fest.





	How Far Down the Road Can You See?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voodoochild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/gifts).



“Been a minute since we had to sneak around an arena, huh?” he asked, leaning into the open door of the SUV to tug Roman into something partway between a headlock and a hug. “Miss it?”

“Not as much as I’ve been missing you.” So, Roman wasn’t pulling any punches, but then he squeezed him tight, taking the sting out of it before things went too awkward or bitter or sad between them.

Mox tilted his head to drop a kiss into Roman’s hair, and then pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up to cover it. Wasn’t easy, camouflaging six feet and change of gorgeous Samoan, but every little bit would help get them from the parking ramp to their hidey-hole without too many curious eyes following.

“Renee already here?” Roman asked as he pulled the cuff of his shirtsleeve down to cover the distinctive lines of his tattooed sleeve and stepped down to the concrete floor.

“Yeah. Had her shimmy in through the ductwork. Thought we’d try a more hiding-in-plain-sight approach with you.”

Roman huffed a little laugh. “Good call. Don’t wanna be crashing through the ceiling. Finally getting some good weight back on.”

“Yeah?” It probably didn’t do much for keeping them inconspicuous, but there was no way for Mox to respond that except to slide his hands into the open front of Roman’s hoodie and let them skate over the shape of him, grazing a patch of warm skin at the small of his back where his tank top had ridden up, dipping into the back pockets of his jeans. Tuck himself close into Roman’s warmth and check out the merchandise and kind of forget to give a damn if anyone saw. “Show us later?”

“All night long, babe. Believe that,” he said, and when they reluctantly broke apart, he was wearing a familiar cheeseball grin that Mox wanted to spend some serious time kissing off of his face. “Lead the way, secret agent man.”

Maybe everyone backstage was right in saying that Omega had screwed the pooch on getting some bands to show up, or being able to pay the models he’d dragged in, or making sure there was no chance the Bucks would have to go out to the ring in thongs borrowed from Nakazawa, but it looked like he wasn’t a total washout. He _had_ come through on scrounging up a private greenroom for Mox. It was almost enough to make him feel bad about introducing himself to the guy with a DDT instead of a handshake. Almost.

It wasn’t 5-star accommodations - a little cinderblock room tucked at the end of a dimly-lit hallway littered with half-collapsed tents - but it didn’t need to be. All it really needed to be was a room free of reporters and podcasters and bloggers and fans with smartphone cameras. A couch and a monitor where his best boy and his favorite girl could come and chill with him and watch a feed of the show without worrying about news of their fraternizing with the enemy making its way back to Stamford. Renee and Roman both said things weren’t the same since he’d cashed out, but he knew neither of them was looking to follow Jimmy Jacobs’s emergency exit path just yet.

When they reached the door, he rapped out shave-and-a-haircut and waited for Renee throw the bolt and open the door to them.

“Hi, Big Uce,” she said, and stepped into Roman’s hug while Mox fastened the door back behind them.

“Long time, no see, babygirl.”

She groaned a little at his dad-joke - they’d spent the night together as recently as Monday, Facetiming him from their hotel bed over his midday meal in Japan - even as she pushed back his hood and rose onto tiptoes to kiss him. Roman leaned down to meet her, his big hand easily spanning the space between her shoulder blades and stroking over the grinning skull of the Death Rider illustration on her shirt.

Seth had asked him once - at Breeze’s wedding reception, while Roman and Renee were out on the dance floor, tipsy and flushed, pressed close and moving together - whether he ever got jealous. He’d tossed back the last of his Jack-and-Coke and laughed: _Of which one?_

Sure, there had been a time when he would have been snarling and territorial, used to fighting bloody for every scrap he called his own - certainly his first go-round as Jon Moxley, probably at least the first couple of years of being Dean Ambrose - but here and now, the feeling that flooded him out while he watched them melt into each other was gratitude. For not having to choose between him and her. For not having to choose between keeping them and chasing all the stories he hasn’t yet told. For knowing down to his bones that they’d both be waiting for him here on the other side of whatever carnage he was about to participate in. For being able to take a couple of steps deeper into the room and put his hands on them both and have them open up a space just for him.

* * *

“I’m guessing this didn’t come from the merch stand this way?” Roman asked, dipping a fingertip into one of the cut-outs she’d snipped out of Jon’s first New Japan t-shirt. “Pretty,” he added, leaning in to brush a kiss over the top of her shoulder, left bare by the new neckline she’d cut.

“We had a little arts-and-crafts time last night,” she said wryly, then - remembering the rasps and scrapes and twangs the roll of barbed wire had made as he bent it to his ill-will while she systematically rent at the crisp shirt in front of her - added, “I don’t know if you’ll like his little project as well.”

“Hey, don’t sell my craftsmanship short over there!” Jon exclaimed from the corner of open floor space where he’d been alternately pacing and doing push-ups through the last two matches. “I think - and Janela’s gonna agree - it’s pretty sharp work.”

Renee booed softly, and Roman gave a little groan of his own - at the terribleness of the pun or the recognition of what it meant for the likely mayhem of the match to come or maybe a bit of both. Jon stuck out his tongue and launched into a playfully indignant promo about the virtues of handmade, artisinal melee weapons that cut off only when the ringing of the bell on the tv caught them all by surprise.

“I guess that’s my cue,” Jon said, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet and jutting his chin at the monitor where the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega were getting their hands raised.

“Kiss for luck?” she offered, trying, for his sake, to power through the knot tightening up in her stomach.

He smiled down at her, soft and knowing, and opened his arms. “I’m already the luckiest asshole in this business,” he said, looking from her to Roman and back and letting the smile broaden enough to bring out a dimple on one side, “but I’ll take that kiss anyway.”

He kissed her back fiercely and squeezed her tight, even lifting her up off her feet for a moment, and she laughed, his excitement catching, even if she wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic as her husband about the prospect of his adding new war wounds to his collection.

“Please be careful. Ish.”

“You know me, baby,” he said, rogue’s grin firmly in place as he shrugged into his leather coat.

“I do,” she said, and continued in a scolding tone that was only mostly teasing, “that’s why I’m reminding you that I want you to be able to walk back here afterward, instead of going out in a stretcher.”

“We’ve got plans for you tonight,” Roman agreed, coming to stand beside her in a united front of mingled pride and worry, “and the ER don’t figure in.”

“Sayin’ you won’t kiss me better?” Jon stepped to him and ducked his head to rub his face against Roman’s jaw, too amped to be still long enough for an easier cuddle. “Pretty sure that’s a lie.”

Roman rested a hand on the back of his head, scrubbing rough-tenderly over his hair, and tipping Jon’s face back up just far enough to touch their foreheads together. “Maybe,” he allowed, and looped his free arm around Renee’s back, reeling her into their huddle. “Still be more fun for all of us if you’re in one piece.”

Jon hummed noncommittally at that even as he leaned into their touches, then Justin Roberts’ voice came from the television behind them, announcing the conclusion of the official, AEW-sanctioned card. With one soft peck of a kiss to Roman’s cheek and another to her forehead, he was off, shooting them a pair of finger-guns and one last beaming smile as the door swung shut behind him.

* * *

“Not the bass!” Renee groaned, cringing and turning partway away from the screen, pressing her cheek against his chest.

“Mhf, ‘fraid so,” he said, wincing at the impact of the guitar’s solid body against his boy’s. He smoothed a soothing stroke over her hair, glad all over again that he hadn’t left her to watch alone (truth be told, glad that _he_ wasn’t watching on his own). “But, hey, look, the officials got him now.”

He dropped his hand away from her hair and closed it around her fingers instead. On the screen, a pair of striped shirts flanked Dean - _Jon_ , he corrected himself, not for the first time - one under each of his shoulders, steering him back up the ramp, past a camera that focused in on the curve of his back, running with rivulets of sweat and streaks of blood.

“That one on the right looks a little deeper than the rest, doesn’t it?” she asked fretfully.

“Think he’ll get away without stitches?”

“Think he’ll stay put for long enough, even if he should have them?”

He started to offer _I’ll help you hold him down_ , when Dean - _Mox_ \- shoved the officials aside and stood alone on the ramp, taking in the rising crowd noise as Omega emerged at the top of the ramp, silver garbage pail in hand. Renee’s smaller hand gripped his like a vise, and they both swore eloquently for the endless seconds it took him to bash the metal barrel across Dean’s bowed back - still dotted with a scattering of silver tacks - repeatedly before planting him onto its warped surface with a Dirty Deeds of his own.

“It’d be a problem for him if we killed one of his new bosses on his first official night on the job, wouldn’t it?” he grumbled darkly. Maybe it should have been obvious, but it hadn’t really come home to him until just now that he couldn’t be his boy’s backup anymore, not without dragging him deeper into shit, anyway.

“Maybe, might still be worth it,” her words a little savage, even as she snuggled in closer, soft and sweet against his side. “Is he... smiling?”

He snorted a not-so-disbelieving laugh, because the screen was full now of their boy’s scruffy face, lit up with with a joy that filled up his own chest. Renee’s too, going by the way she leaned her head against his shoulder with a peal of laughter of her own.

“Why do we love him again?” he asked as the screen went blue with the end of the feed.

“The man does make a mean breakfast for dinner,” she said. Then, quieter, “I really miss being able to go get him at the curtain.”

“Was just thinking the same thing.” Some nights it had been hard to get all the way to gorilla without kissing him the way he wanted.

They agreed to hold each other back from strolling out into the million backstage selfies that were already filling up all the AEW-related hashtags. Just as they’d braced themselves for a long little while of waiting for Dean to wrap up whatever post-show business he might take on or get roped into, someone was at the door, tapping out a chaotic rhythm. They shared a look, and he saw his own blend of annoyance and affection reflected in Renee’s face; this quick meant that he definitely hadn’t let anyone in medical check him out, but it also meant he hadn’t let anything else keep him from being with them in this moment.

Roman turned the lock, and he tumbled into the room, grin still blinding, and pulled them both into a clinch, smearing them both with a sheen of pink sweat that would give them an excuse they didn’t really need to share a shower later.

“Fuck! That felt so good! Even the parts that didn’t,” he said, still jazzed enough that he shook them a little. “You see everything?”

“Every last bit. You sick fuck,” she affirmed, and smacked his chest a little like she was mad, even as she made the last words sound more like an _I love you_ than anything else.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, voice softer and rougher than before.

Roman tilted his head to press a kiss to his temple, tasting salt, and said, “Love you, too, Tackbutt.”


End file.
